A team of volunteers finds stranded pet after three days

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KITSAP COUNTY, Wash. — Thanks to volunteers who organized a rescue, 'Sasha,' a Bernese mountain dog, is home safe and sound after a 150-foot fall in the Olympic Mountains.

A local newspaper, The Kitsap Sun, reported that Sasha, 5-years-old, jumped off a cliff on Mount Ellinor in Washington after seeing a mountain goat Wednesday night.

Owners Gwen Hall and Jim Krieger yelled down the 5,944-peak after Sasha but heard no barks for help. Sasha hiked up the standard route with her owners before falling down the steep side of the cliff.

"We went to the edge to look for her, but we could not even take one step down," Krieger said in an interview with The Kitsap Sun.

Hall and Krieger spent hours looking for Sasha but didn't have the necessary equipment or experience to search for her. After returning home Wednesday evening, they asked for help by posting on mountaineering web sites.

After three days, a group of six experienced climbers, who had volunteered to look for Sasha, found the dog alive 150 feet from the summit on a narrow shelf. Sasha's only injury was a broken right leg, the newspaper reported.

"She wasn't moving, which was a good thing since she could have injured herself more," said Olympic Mountain Rescue volunteer Peter Ozimek in an interview with The Kitsap Sun.

After giving Sasha food and water, the team lifted the dog off the mountain using a litter attached to ropes from above.

"Those rescue people were amazing," Hall told the newspaper. "I couldn't believe they took the time out from work to help. It's an amazing and a humbling thing. There are angels and good people in this world."

Sasha is now recovering after having surgery to repair tendons in her right leg Monday.